Semiosis by Sue Burke
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel was a most pleasant surprise, driving way beyond my character-oriented expectations and diving right into some hardcore generational storytelling on an alien world with an EXTREMELY interesting dominant life form. :)

I really loved the whole pacifist angle and loved how many problems it caused. But on the other hand, it set up a very cool mutualism with the aggressive bamboo.

I recommend this book for all you folks who loved Children of Time, Grass, or any other hard-SF author dealing with awesomely alien worlds with unique problems for colonists. Make no mistake, this IS a generational starship kind of novel. The starship happens to be a planet and it has a lot of nasty challenges, but the premise kept me on the edge of my seat during the entire read.

Oh, and while I said this wasn't designed to be a character-driven novel, I happened to love almost all the characters in it. Especially the naive ones. I knew something bad would happen to them. It always does. :)

But the real treat here? The biology and chemistry!

I might just rank this book into one of my favorites lists. It's been a while since I read some truly serious SF that takes itself seriously.

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